Disturbances in the Field (55 page)

My hand tightened around a bunch of spinach—I could have shoved it in his face—and for an instant I wished this man had perished in a gas chamber or at least in the forests of Poland. But decent childhoods, alas, enslave us to decency and I repented, grudgingly. “It’s not the same thing. I have no one to be angry at. Where are the McIntosh apples?” Phil was home, suntanned and taller, slightly less morose. Once more I was shopping in bulk.

“Hah!” He waved me to the apples. “If you worked here you’d have plenty! You wouldn’t believe what I have to listen all day from
them
”—jerking his head towards the checkout counter—“about Jews. Jews, Jews. If it was up to them, back to the ovens. Poof.”

“I think you must be exaggerating. They’re always friendly to me and the other Jewish customers.”

“And why not? They want your money, dummy.”

“Don’t call me names, will you, Mr. Zeitlowitz?” I handed him the apples to be weighed.

“Come on. What’s the matter, you’re so sensitive? Between
lands-kit
it matters?”

“Yes, it matters.” Wrong, Vivie, you were wrong. Sorry, my darling. “Esteban doesn’t call me names and neither do the Koreans.”

“Behind your back they call you. Worse.”

“Well, then you can call me behind my back too. A bunch of bananas, please. No, not those. They’re too green.”

“Names you talk about—you heard the things they’re saying about us in the UN? Starting all over. It was never finished.”

“Uh-huh.” I picked up the full basket.

“So have a happy New Year.” He shouldn’t have tried to smile; on his face it didn’t work.

“The same to you.”

“You can carry all that or maybe you want they should deliver?”

“I can carry it.”

“So I’ll be seeing you again?”

“If you’re lucky.”

When I arrived it was after six o’clock. The others were nearing the end of a Brahms quartet. I sat down to listen next to Howard Schor, the bass player, a man of prodigious memory and patience. Like his instrument Howard was built on a grand scale, with a firm comfortable body and a sanguine face. The absentminded haze in his eyes was misleading: he never failed to come in on time, and unobtrusively kept everyone on an even keel. Howard was always wiping his thick glasses on a handkerchief, tender, pensive daubs. He wiped them now, as he whispered hello and peered with interest into my bag of fruit.

“Do you want an apple?”

“That’s too loud. I’ll take a banana, if you don’t mind.”

His voice was like his instrument too, and he used it gently, as if hesitant to release its full breadth. His playing was not at all hesitant. Dense and witty. Last month we had toasted his seventieth birthday with champagne.

“How is this new violinist?” I whispered. “This is the first time I’ve seen him.”

“Frank? Good. Young but very good. Listen.”

Frank was plump and looked about twenty-two and he was good. Jasper had found him at Aspen during the summer and lured him back to New York. Jasper himself had gained weight as well as acquired a suntan in healthy Colorado. There was a new ease in the way he held his head; his brow was unfurrowed as he played, the tendons in his neck not quite so taut. Their violist was Carla Roby, a friend of Rosalie’s I had played with at the Baroque Marathon in June. Carla was young also, wan and slender, with a wide-boned, expectant face. When the four of them finished, Rosalie pinned her streaming black hair back into its knot. They huddled together to talk; with every passionate toss of her head and wave of the errant bow, strands escaped again.

“Okay, we might as well get right to it and take a break later,” Jasper said. “You ready, Howard? Lydia?” I guess.

Rosalie and Jasper and I took turns with the opening, slipping the temperate melody from hand to hand. A certain restraint in the strings gave it an exploratory sound—a snaking path. Rosalie’s notes were rich as ever but slightly tense; Jasper was radiant. Soon he and I took up a dialogue, tossing the theme back and forth, chasing each other like shadows. Our timing and repartee worked perfectly. Except that beyond the accuracy, his notes were calling out to mine, eliciting, rousing them. It was not for nothing that Victor had imagined Jasper liked me: Jasper’s sounds virtually yearned toward the piano like a creature with a mating call, or a great ship listing to slice the waiting surface of the sea. It had nothing to do with the flesh, though. It was another sort of yearning, selfless. I wished I could answer him in kind as I had in the past. But I couldn’t afford to yearn towards anything with such abandon. Suddenly, just before she was due to pick up the theme, Rosalie stopped.

“I’m sorry, but something is wrong with the piano. Lydia, are you there?”

“Of course I’m here. What do you mean?”

“You sound awfully, I don’t know, retiring. I think you need to be more forthright. It’s a piano quintet, after all. Why include a piano if we’re not going to hear it?”

Jasper passed a hand over his face as if to hide. “We’re just running through to get it set, really. But as long as we’ve stopped ... It’s also a trifle fast, I think.”

“I know,” I said. “I started fast on purpose. When it’s slow it starts to sicken and die.”

“No, he’s right, Lydia. I’ve heard it done at this tempo. Pretty soon it gets all tinkly and bright. It sounds like nothing.”

At the slower tempo my solo, a simple unassuming bit, sounded moribund. As Jasper was about to take it up, Rosalie stopped us again. Howard emitted a few more turgid notes—perhaps he was hoping to charm us back. “I’m sorry, really. But, Lydia, this is the first time you really appear. So appear.”

“Look, Rosalie, this is how I rehearse. I know exactly what’s needed and I’ll do it for real when the time comes. You keep stopping like this and we’ll never get anywhere.”

“This is not how you rehearse. You always go all out.”

“Is this group therapy or are we playing music?” Carla Roby asked in her soft high voice.

“Quite right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“From letter D,” Jasper murmured. There was a clumsy silence till I realized letter D was my part alone. While I played, Rosalie sulked for her nine-measure pause.

“Maybe we’d better take five minutes off,” Jasper said at the end of the first movement. He went out to the coffee machine with Carla. Howard closed his eyes, practicing his bulbous notes. Rosalie removed the cello from between her legs and came to sit on the piano bench.

“This is not personal, Lydia. But a little feeling, you know, might help? Passion? Real, I mean, not Liberace. It gets us all down. What’s the matter, are you sick or something?”

“I’m not sick. What’s with you? We never get this way at rehearsals.”

“I’m nervous. It’s a big concert, we have a lot at stake. The ensemble has to mesh right. Otherwise it is trite. It might as well be a wine commercial. You know that.”

“I’m tired. I worked on Stravinsky all morning at that church in the Village. It’s a benefit for their draft-counseling program. Two years of festivals for poor Stravinsky—by the end no one will ever want to hear another note. But okay, passion. Feeling. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Jasper is weak. He should be taking over more.”

“Jasper sounds fantastic. He has never played this well.”

“Yes. I meant he should be getting the group in order more. I shouldn’t have to do this.”

“So don’t,” I said curtly. “Jasper has faith. He was never one to spell things out. He waits for them to happen.”

The Andante was lyrical and wistful; I was spiteful. Feeling? I gave it to her with a vengeance. I let the notes drip from my fingers till they bordered on parody. Howard raised his formidable gray eyebrows. But no one stopped. I had gotten myself in a nasty bind—either they made demands or they made allowances. And in private, It’s gotten to Lydia’s playing, they would say.

The Scherzo was easier: short and glittery, all speed and color, controlled force and grace. Pianists can flaunt a kind of superficial verve that impresses an audience. Musicians are not impressed. I was overpowering the others, smothering their delicacy, without which the speed and color became crude fireworks. Jasper could have competed, fought fire with fire, but he was too good for that. He frowned, played with his eyes lowered.

The “Trout,” for all its apparent ingenuousness, is a secretive work. When I first played it in college I was too ingenuous myself to confront all of its secrets—I played it as the lyrical, life-affirming piece it is reputed to be—and now I didn’t choose to. One of the secrets is a strain of sadness—nostalgia, mourning—emitted covertly, like a leafy scent you have to bend close to catch. A great and magnanimous composer, but a composer of ambiguity, is asked to write a simple rosy evening’s entertainment and tries to comply; despite his efforts the scent of ambiguity pervades the rosy entertainment. Another secret is the strikingly democratic meshing of the instruments, even the uncustomary bass. In all chamber music each voice speaks according to its abilities, but here each makes an equal contribution on its own terms, like the working of a perfectly ordered community. A Utopia. No one stands alone for long; nothing individual is accomplished without the deferential support of the rest. Not that the five play much in unison. More often they play in contrast, sometimes in heated
melees,
with contradictions and digressions, one voice after another seizing the airwaves for a thrilling moment. But never tyrannically; it is a community of equals. The piano part is not technically difficult. The task is in the phrasing and the pauses, the pressure on each note that yields the precise quality of sound the group needs to stay buoyant, no more and no less. And then that harmony, that clasping of hands like Matisse’s dancers in a ring, gives the quintet its irresistible vigor as well as its sweetness: love made audible. That was what Rosalie was seeking; without it our separate talents were barren.

It was the fourth movement I had been dreading all along, the theme and variations using Schubert’s song about the trout. Jasper introduced the melody. His sound was pure and lucid, a narrow band of light. I almost didn’t come in on time, he so captivated me. I had the first variation and it couldn’t have been simpler—single treble notes, an isolated melodic line. All any pianist needed to do was allow it to emerge without impediment. Some Chinese sage, I think, told a writer who aspired to write a perfect book: First make yourself perfect, then write naturally. I played but my mind was helplessly elsewhere: on that guileless trout darting in the glistening brook, unaware of the angler on shore who waited to trap him and finally, impatient for the prey, muddied the water so the trout could not see his right path. And on how I had longed to be chosen to play this in college and George said you don’t die if you don’t get what you long for, but I did get it in the end. And then Victor came in during the rehearsal and we went to that bar near the unfinished cathedral. “You might get to like me. It’s been known to happen.” I was not subtle, but the way I played the “Trout” was, he said. “I loved the way you played it. I loved what you kept back as much as what you put in.” His hands shook but he pressed on. “Do you think it’s easy to talk to you like this?” I played what I dreaded and it was far from perfect, or subtle. It had a querulous sound.

“Now, Lydia,” Jasper began, as we stopped by tacit consent. “This is all yours. This is an opportunity.”

“I’m not looking for opportunities.”

“You have to!” Rosalie said. “We’re not playing games here.”

“I will when I have to. Just lay off.”

“Wait a minute. Is there something going on here we two should know about?” Carla asked. “Or is this how you three always—”

“No. There’s nothing.” Jasper locked eyes with Rosalie. His nod was barely visible and they began as one. I had to give what they wanted this time. It was mere stubborn pride rising, a cold professional pride—what could Carla and Howard be thinking? I forced the naive, poignant melody inside, breathed it in like acrid air and breathed it out fresh and resplendent as it was meant to be, though it burned my chest like hell. The others took their turns with it, balanced and equitable as in a Utopia. And for the rest of the movement we lovingly badgered that little melody, sent it up in the air and caught it, twirled it, twisted it and wrung it, squeezed every ounce of juice from it. Rosalie was elated. She wanted to do it all again so I could have my opening solo, but I refused. I didn’t want to be out there alone. It was hard enough being in the group, being part of that audible love and putting mine in.

The last movement took the little Utopia on Hungarian holiday; it was laced with dashing exuberance and my part was showy. I didn’t mind brash romanticism—that didn’t touch any of my untouchable places. I even enjoyed sweeping through a stretch of furious trills; during the brief lyrical calm that followed, I heard the click of the door behind me. Too early for any custodian to be rushing us. It was Victor again, I knew it. Uncanny how he could figure out where to find me. Come to replay history, correct the paths of atoms? Take me to a bar? Offer me a beer? I clenched my teeth and kept hold, finished my triplets with Jasper in a fine flourish. And then I made a mistake. I wasn’t even sure what I had done but I was sure enough in the wrong key.

“Oh Lydia!” Rosalie practically flung the bow at me. “We repeated that already!”

“Shit. I’m sorry. That was dumb.”

She wiped her forehead on her wrist. “And we were going along great.”

“I said I was sorry. Those repeats are so confusing.” I turned around. It wasn’t Victor but Rosalie’s ex-husband, Karl.

“Hi there, hon,” she called. “Have a seat. Just a few minutes, okay?” Karl made a gesture of all right with both hands, like patting down a billowy cloud.

“Twelve measures from the break,” Jasper said mildly, raising the violin to his chin. “And then straight on. No repeat, Lydia. Carla, you could be a trifle louder with those thirds.” He looked at me appraisingly and ten measures later whispered, “No repeat here.” Sixteen after that, “Repeat here.” My protector.

“Well, praise the Lord,” exclaimed Rosalie at the final chord. “We only have a week and a half more. The whole thing is balance. We must get that right.”